Autumn graveyard
Creeping brambles
Tawny grasses
Half obscuring
Weathered tombstones
Scudding cumulus
Burst of sunshine
Lighting death dates
Year, month, and dayHilltop graveyard
One room schoolhouse
Inn and churchyard
Hamlet spread out
Down below
Settlers’ green bones
Slowly seeping
Through the soil
They called their ownOld-world graveyard
Back to nature
All must follow
Feeding roots of
Oak and maple
Sinking softly
Joined in union
Spirits rising
Salt of the earth

There is an old graveyard near my home. It sits atop a hill surrounded by a hamlet dating back to the 18^th century. The one room schoolhouse and church are a stone’s throw away. The parsonage, inn, and farmhouses are spread out at the foot of the hill. A dull school child could watch the gravedigger at work across the road. The journey from farmhouse, to church, to graveyard—a small triangle.

Many of the tombstones have been wiped clean by wind and rain. Those that are legible show a curiosity: Death dates meticulously recorded to the month and day, but no birth dates. The school mistress would only have to lead her pupils in a straggly line across the road and up the hill to impart a math lesson: If Mr. Walling died on March 30th, 1860, aged seventy-five years, eight months and fifteen days, on what day was he born?